Why People Cooperate by Tyler Tom R.; Tyler Tom R. R.;

Author:Tyler, Tom R.; Tyler, Tom R. R.;
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Princeton University Press

Application to Social Control Agents

A second arena in which there are potentially important policy implications of the social motivational model and of a focus on procedural justice and trust involves models for managing social control agents (Tyler, Callahan, and Frost 2007). Recent evidence of prisoner mistreatment in Iraq and of human rights violations such as the burning of prisoners’ bodies in Afghanistan reflect a new manifestation of recurrent problems of inappropriate conduct by agents of social control—in this case, soldiers (Hartle 1989; Wakin 1979; Wasserstrom 1970). These examples point attention to the long-term question of how societies can effectively regulate the behavior of their agents of social control (Huntington 1957; Kelman and Hamilton 1989; Shapiro 1988). Rules, laws, and policies exist to prohibit inappropriate conduct by those engaged in the maintenance of order, and those identified as engaging in such conduct can be charged, tried, and punished for it. However, a preferable strategy would be to create a framework within which such conduct was minimized or did not occur at all.

The issue of regulating agents of social control is not unique to the military. Research on policing similarly documents a wide variety of ways in which law enforcement officers sometimes abuse their power by engaging in unlawful activities (Brown 1981; Goldstein 1977; National Research Council 2004; Skolnick and Fyfe 1993). Abuses of authority occur in street stops and arrests, in detentions, in interrogations, in searches and seizures, and in cases of the use of excessive nonlethal and lethal force. These practices, whether they involve soldiers or law enforcement agents, can reflect cases of the failure to effectively implement adherence to organizational rules and regulations. These failures illustrate why civilian and upper management control is needed to regulate the conduct of those involved in order maintenance.

An important reason for the persistence of problems in preventing misconduct among those responsible for order maintenance is the nature of the situation in which social control agents work—that is, the nature of the tasks they perform and the institutional structure and the dynamics that surround those engaged in these tasks (Tyler 2006a, 2006b; Tyler and Blader 2000).

As societies’ primary formal instruments of social control, those responsible for order maintenance are given a great deal of power. They have the right to use coercion, even lethal force, for social control purposes. For example, in contrast to the elaborate legal procedures required before the state can impose the death penalty, law enforcement officers and members of the armed forces are authorized to make split-second life and death decisions. On a more mundane level, the police decide whether people are stopped and questioned, whether they are arrested, and whether they receive help with problems and in emergency situations, while the armed forces exercise widespread control over the everyday lives of civil populations during times of strife. Of course, in both groups such discretion is not total. Behavior is guided and influenced by law and public policy.

Society creates order maintenance agents to exercise social control by bringing the behavior

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